Sound absorbers in the form of panels arranged in a suspended manner from the ceiling of a room are well known in the art. The panels may by way of example be arranged in a parallel fashion suspended vertically from the ceiling. Also other patterns may be used, such as herring bone patterns. It is known with such panels having an integrated lighting where the lighting is arranged on the lower edge of the panels facing the floor, thereby providing the primary illumination of the room. The lighting source may by way of example be in the form of LED's.
EP-2180109 discloses a panel in the form of a foam part that can be suspended from a ceiling via a mounting rail to perform the function of a sound absorber. The foam part has two opposite side walls and a downwardly facing end face. The foam part further has a profiled portion that is associated with the side walls and with the downwardly facing end face. The profiled portion is formed to be open in the direction of the respective side wall, and extends over the entire length of the foam part. A lighting element in the form of a strip with LEDs is provided in each profiled portion. The LEDs directly illuminate the rear wall and the top of the profiled portion, and by virtue of reflection the light exits indirectly via the opening of the profiled portion, and diffusely through the downwardly facing end face of the foam part.
For the use in an office environment, it is desirable that the sound reducing capabilities of vertical panels work equally in all directions. For panels that are primarily oriented in one direction, such as in parallel rows, sound is optimally blocked in directions orthogonal to the panel orientation, i.e. orthogonally to the main surface of the panel. The sound blocking effect in a direction parallel to the panels is however low. Thus, for an office space with a more quadratic layout, such parallel suspended panels cannot provide an acoustic improvement for all transmission directions. To overcome these problems it is known to try to reduce the effect of the acoustic direction resulting from parallel panels by using so called checkerboard or herringbone patterns.